20 years in Library and Information Science - reflect and repent, part 4: theorizing

One afternoon in 1997 (or 1998) I had a seminar on the study that eventually became my doctoral thesis. I can’t quite remember the discussion, but it must have concerned some rather theoretical issues, because I do remember my supervisor, professor Lars Höglund, sighing: ”but we must be able to tell something – it is possible for us to know things!!?”. I was a bit puzzled by this odd exclamation – that was really not the way I looked at what I did.  Of course he was right. When I started off in research twenty years ago it was not, however, self-evident that a young doctoral student would have that perspective. Postmodern theory was, at least in Library and Information Science, prevalent amongst the young, and we upheld some pride in taking in the ”new”.

Looking back now, however, I can see that maybe I never actually was as postmodern as I thought I was. At some point I definitely understood that I at least had left the postmoden irony-laden theories which I, to be honest, found quite tedious. Instead I see, through the whole of my work, a consistent theoretical underpinning relating to marxism (the ”young” Marx), neo-marxism and critical theory. The names I have followed and used in my research are, among others, Paul Ricoeur, James G. March, Chantal Mouffe and lately also Maurizio Ferraris. I have revolved around an axis which actually consists of a serious questioning of the postmodernity I thought I was a part of in the beginning of my scholarly path. What instead has guided me is the firm belief in society as something which really is ”out there”, possible to grasp and analyse, based on a materiality untouched by interpretation (often visible through its documentality) and without the binary relation of individual/context that so has fuelled contemporary Library and Information Science. The theory of mimesis by Paul Ricoeur was Aristotelian rather than Platonic; the ”new institutionalism” of James G. March opposed traditional institutional theory, based on simple behaviorism; the theory of agonistic pluralism forwarded by Chantal Mouffe gave me tools to analyse political processes which could explain why the often proclaimed death of ideologies was just an illusion; the concept of documentality, as formulated by Maurizio Ferraris, has made it possible to explain the legitimacy of social objects and insitutions through the documents and processes of documentation by which they are made visible.

These perspectives of course not only provide arguments for social critique, they may even be part of an argument for change. On the other hand, I don’t believe (anymore) that science will overturn the structures of power that opress the world today. Should the masses act on scientific knowledge, then we would for instance all be vegetarians, based on the fact that (a) we do not need to eat dead animals to survive, (b) the logic of the ”market” make the meat industry one of the most cynical and disgusting in the world.  But most people don’t act on such facts, now do they?

In Library and Information Science, we can establish the democratic significance of library services working in local society settings, as well as we can analyse the importance of a well working scientific communication – a prerequisite for development through knowledge. Not enough, perhaps, to turn contemporary society into a more worthy and humanistic one than that which we have today – but, enough to provide the basis for formulation of important questions that reach well beyond the influence (and interest) of the discipline.

In order to see the world, we need knowledge; in order to see the knowledge we have to document it; the documents need to be described and organized, they need to be made available and possible to retrieve; once so, we can internalize them and convert them into action, and out of this action there is (still?) room to achieve change. But, of course, the thought of redirecting social development requires an understanding of the very existence of social relations, not as ironies or discursive constructions, but as experiences of real people. In this way both studies of librarianship and documentation may in itself be legitimized from a materialistic point of view. Library and Information Science has indeed a lot of potential in this respect.

If any of my scientific writings should find a place for someone, somewhere, in the quest for social change and the role therein of documentation and librarianship, I would probably die a happy man. Before death, though, I might just keep doing this for, well, another twenty years.

20 years in Library and Information Science - reflect and repent, part 3: writing

For twenty years now I have been paid to communicate abouth things I find important in writing. As I am not particularly fond of people in general, I see this as a privilege. As a scholar I am to a very high degree a writer, something which I feel seldom is talked about when it comes to research – one only rarely hear a social researcher talk about his or her writing process – focus is always on the ”results”. To me the identity as a scholarly writer has been essential. When I entered the academy it was with a large portion of curiosity of what I would be able to do as a writer within the confinements of science – both in terms of research, and in terms of more popular writings. All of my research output is very personal to me. When I see my list of publication, I do not see just a list of articles, book chapters, reports and books. I see an ouvre. Some might find that pretentious, and it is. I do believe that lack of pretention is a big problem today, in research, and in society as a whole. The original fascination for documentation and libraries that once made me choose to engage in Library and Information Science in teaching and research, has always been my main guidence in the choices I have made in terms of topics and form. To me, my work follows a fairly straight path (with a few exceptions), and each new project I have taken on has begun in my own private contextualization, were I ask myself where this could fit in to the overall structure of my work. Whether this is visible to others is completely uninteresting. I am only interested in the direction of my own inner compass.  If I follow that, I am confident I will formulate interesting things to say that will take on a life of its own and be a part of discussions and debates of various sorts. In many cases this has also been the case. Suddenly I see, or hear of, a text of mine in a discussion that I could not imagine – sometime several years after it has been written. To see the individual lives of my books and articles unfold before me is gratifying beyond words. It is very much the way in which I connect to the world. I have several times over the years been invited to discussions and debates relating to topics I have written about. For the most I decline such invitations – I do not feel comfortable talking in the context of a debate – it is really as simple as that.

My research is, as I said, very personal to me.  It is therefore very important to me to keep as much independence in my work as I possibly can. Once the text is out and about, it is for any and all to scrutinize and crucify, but I do not compromise with my ideas. This why I do not engage in searching for ”external funding”, as it is called at the university. As most external funding in Sweden is the same tax money that already give me my pay at the end of the month, this is of course just discourse. External funding, especially in a topic like Library and Information Science, is nothing more than a control system giving some research a political legitimacy, and other not. I am utterly uninterested in the political legitimacy of my work, and doing my research in the realm of my given slot of time as a scholar has always been important. The result starts by now to show – it is possible to develop and do interesting research without spending a lot of time applying for money that you will most likely not get. This system set to discipline the spirits of scholars is devastating for many good ideas or, at the very least, time consuming - time that could be better used doing research. The system of reward within the university in terms of symbolic power and influence is obvious. It does, however, not have anything to do with the quality of research performed.

Writing science is in itself a negotiation, in terms of peer review processes and the scrutiny at conferences. The important thing is that these processes come relatively late in the creative process, and primarily concerns (at least with peer reviewing) the presentation of results. I remember when I started off with my first articles in 1993/1994, how I felt as if I was learning a new language. It was like learning to write sonnets – without the correct rhymes, it will simply be something else. Soon enough I realized it wasn’t all that rigouros, and I have done some experimentation with forms - for better and for worse. It was, however, an important choice for me – if I wanted to communicate and reach out to people, this could very well be a way that was fruitful. The writing process still holds. I can work though a project, or dwell on a problem for a very long time (sometimes years) without even making notes. At a given time – or a deadline – I sit down and I… write, quickly, with the basic structure all set in my mind's eye. Sometimes a given argument or line of thought finds its form in this very late writing process as I tap away – sometimes I have had a formulation or a sentence in my head for a very long time. If it’s good, it stays, if it doesn’t hold, it’ll disappear never to come back.

Results of social research is always negotiations and interpretations. I have always wondered why individual writing processes are so seldom discussed within the universities – as if we only reported, as if we are not – first and foremost – creative intellectuals, authors of science.

20 years in Library and Information Science - reflect and repent, part 2: teaching

Having worked for a full 20 years in academia, there has been a lot of teaching. I enjoy being in the classroom. I have never seen myself as a teacher – I still don’t – but I enjoy it. It’s a decent way to make a living. When I first entered a classroom in the role of a teacher in 1993, I had been employed at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) in Borås for about three weeks, immediately after graduating at that very department. The new semester was just about to start and one of the most experienced teachers had, for reasons I have long forgot, failed to appear. I was told to replace him and at a three days notice I had to prepare a course in cataloguing and bibliography. I was given a copy of the Swedish cataloguing rules and a few articles and set off to work.  I quickly got a grasp of the rules (I had studied them thoroughly only a year earlier, as a student). What really scared me, however, was the idea of mantling the role of a teacher. Not ever have I had any urge whatsoever to lead anyone else, and a teacher is obviously a leader. I needed to get over this nervousness, so went to the bookstore and bought a copy of Karl Popper’s ”Unended quest: an intellectual autobiography” - don’t ask… For some reason it worked; when the students arrived I had prepared a series of lectures on cataloguing and bibliograhpic control. To my sincere surprise, I found that they accepted the authority I was set to uphold. Up until today I have since favoured the traditional lecture as my pedagogical vehicle. I find it simple enough; the only thing I want from the students is their full attention – as they can demand my full attention while giving my talk. If I find the group unattentative, I leave the room, as I expect my students to leave if they find me unfocused or ill prepared. We should not waste each other’s time.

In the mid 1990’s distance studies were not as common as they are today. At the SSLIS we had, interestingly enough, a group of students in Stockholm, some 400 km away. Several times each semester teachers went on the train, booked into hotels, and taught the same things as on campus. In between meetings assignmets were sent by mail – not e-mail, of course – real mail. It was, by today’s measures a clumpsy and not very efficient way of teaching, but it worked well. It’s easy to forget that such solutions actually did work, and that the new tools for distance learning has done nothing in increasing the quality of the work performed by the students – even though we have a whole learning industry feeding the denial about this. Technology is only just that  - technology – not something which increases quality in teaching or learning. What it has done, however, is impose a lot of previously unecessary work on the teachers. It has not done us much good.

In 2008, I shifted departments to my present one, at what now is Linnaeus university in Växjö. In terms of teaching I was put in a completely new situation. Leaving a large school with (topically) limited teaching assignments, I now had to teach ”everything”. Fewer students and less faculty doing the same job as at the larger department. I had to reconsider my view on how we best teach Library and Information Science. The discipline consists of a large number of disparate subfields, and it often requires both skills and patience to make the students see how it all fits together. Is it reallly necessary to cover it all? As I am a friend of deep study rather than of superficial overviews, I sometimes consider the order that was taught when a was a student myself; there were two lines of study. One that focussed on public librarianship, with literature, pedagogy, school librarianship etc. The other focussed on academic and specialized librarianship, and consisted of study in scholarly communication, advanced information seeking, bibliographic practices etc. As that was a division set to fit a vocational education of its time, it made sense. I wonder though, if perhaps it still would make sense, in some odd way. Would it be completely impossible to make indepth study into the different fields of the academic discipline, focusing on the relation to the (increasingly) various fields our students, for the most parts, are entering their educational programmes to reach?

There is no answer to this, of course, but today when we are more or less forced to simplify university courses in order to get every student to pass, it is important to question the development. Not everyone should study at university level, just as not everyone should be allowed to fly an aeroplane. A university should pride itself in offerning students qualifyed, indepth teaching and study opportunities.  Today that has become, strangely enough, more or less a utopia.  It is really sad. The bizarre trust put in technology, social media and other new ”tools” in teaching contributes – along with short-sighted funding terms and evaluation practices – to the eroding of the system. Pedagogical theory, based on these tools take us away from the essence of learning – the knowledge itself.  When I introduce a course, I tell my students that I, apart from their full attention, only expect one thing; that they read. Books and articles. In full. A lot. There is no way around it – small talk and web-based communication platforms can never replace slow and deep reading as a way of attaining new and durable knowledge. Does this seem hard? Well, take comfort in thae fact that I could never impose such demands on others if I had not imposed them on myself first. I skip the new learning platforms in my daily work as a teacher, as much as I possibly can. Instead I read. A lot. The order is really that simple – first we read, then we can talk. In the end, we might just learn something.

  

20 years in Library and Information Science - reflect and repent, part 1: conferencing

This year I have worked within Library and Information Science for two full decades, and I have a confession to make: I never was one for conferences. Conferences are full of networkers, and I am not one of them. I take a very long time with people and I have severe difficulties with the shallow acquaintancies and polite small talk dominating most conference scenes.  I have, however done them, and I have become better at it over the years. I have even found a few conferences I like – small ones without much of the invisible codes of conduct, the hidden hierarchies and the disturbing power structures of the major, reoccurring LIS conferences and meetings. What has stuck with me, in most cases, are not the presentations, but everything else, the things that connects to (said he, pompously) life. Aspects connected to work or career tend to fade away very quickly in the turns of my bleak memory. But - I have got stuck in a snowstorm in Texas. I have been food poisoned at a vegetarian restaurant in Vilnius only to find myself giving a talk in an over-crowded room at the university the following morning, wearing a purple tie, pretending to be fine. I have discussed love and the construction of running shoes in an Italian restaurant in Wisconsin. I have heard an interpreter break down in laughter over a French professor’s desperate attempts to speak comprehensible English. I have been the judge in a competition where internationally renowned scholars created metatheoretical snowmen. I have been too drunk to attend early morning sessions. I have been called a ”communist” for questioning the ethics in studying the information behaviour of scientists working in animal testing plants. I have seen elderly professors sleep deeply while I presented a paper. I have slept deeply while elderly professors presented theirs. I have been in a barfight with a bibliometrician over the value of positivism. I have been guided by insomnia through long walks in nocturnal cities that I have not known. I have been yelled at by a drunk, angry Danish professor in a pink tuxedo in a small boat on a Finnish lake. I have flown across the Atlantic to give a five minute talk. I have been offered a modelling job for a British artist in her studio in Cyprus - after the conference I was sent a sketch showing me presenting, shaped as an alien monster. I declined. I have spent a break between sessions discussing the Wolverhampton mid 1970’s football team (which I saw taking on ”my” team, Malmö FF, as a child) in the shadow of the mighty Old Trafford. I have got lost in a dark basement outside of Tampere, filled with large, scary puppets, voodoo dolls and shrunken heads during a late dinner, just searching for the lavatory.  I have seen grown men and women choosing whom to talk to and whom to not, from a list of attendees. I have stood bewildered in a corner, fingering on my drink searching for a way out.

And, I have been in the presence of sheer brilliance. I have seen paradigms shift. I have seen people I did not expect anything of turn out to be quite bearable – often to my genuine surprise. 

When I started off as a doctoral student, attending conferences was of course part of the education and a way in to the research community. It was quite frustrating to feel that I couldn’t really crack the codes and make it work – within me. This part of the job has been a struggle. It is only during the last few years I have found a peace in myself which has allowed me to incorporate all of this into my life in a balanced manner. I now allow myself to be picky, I do not attend many conferences (internationally or nationally), but the ones I do, I go to because I have chosen to – for my own sake. I have reached a point where I know quite a lot of people; I do indeed take a long time in approaching, but by now some have actually been there quite a long time too. A qualified few I even dare count as some sort of friends. I am still cautions of attending the large conferences of my discipline, such as the CoLIS and the ASIS&T meetings. I avoid their formalities and keep a good look out for the symbolic power show-offs and submissive boot-licking practicies. I much prefer the closer environment of, for example,  DOCAM, which I started to attend regularly in 2009, even hosting the event at my university in Växjö in 2011. These annual meetings have emerged during the last decade as a calmer alternative to the larger conferences of the discipline. They put focus on the the presented studies, long discussions and the things people do – and not on who they are. They are informal, egalitarian and engourage writing, thinking and all that which make us intellectuals, in an academic environment which does not have the time anymore for intellectual endeavors. After all, that is what has kept me in this field for two decades now. If I had let the conference environment with its twisted social games seek me out, I would have been lost to the wolves by now – and it has been close. Instead I have stuck to my writing, slowly carving out the ideas that have emerged from my fascination for libraries, documents, documentation, collecting, and the strange occupation of librarianship.

On the documentality of a mummy

I love museums – in a very conservative way. I want them old and dusty and free from the plague of pedagogy. One such museum where I have spent  much time wandering through the seemingly endless collections of artifacts is the New Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, established in the early 1880’s. It is a remarkable museum with a winter garden surrounded by collections from almost all times and places. Most notable perhaps are the collections from classical Greece, Rome and ancient Egypt. When I take the kids there, the highlight is always the descent into the ”Egyptian tomb” where there is an actual mummy on display along several objects and caskets from graves of pharaonic times. There are no narratives to be found in the room, but the objects themselves; documents, in Suzanne Briet’s sense,  of a distant and strange time. They exilerate the mind and triggers our fantasy.

Another favourite of mine is the Museum of Natural History in Göteborg, founded in 1833. It has both odd creatures in formaldehyde solutions and large drawers filled with systematically pinned butterflies and bugs in the entomological department. The specimens are there to be seen as evolution created them, and yes, they are strange indeed.

When wandering through the collections of these museums I am often stricken by how time seems to have been standing still since the very time of their organization. They are in themselves examples of a view on collecting and the value of organized originality. The fact that the mummies, sculptures, butterflies and bugs are real is not only important – it is the very legitimacy of the collection.

Last weekend I took the children to an exibition in Malmö, promising  a full experience of ”Tutankhamun – the tomb and the treasures”. It proved to be the very opposite of  old style museum exhibitions. It was a commercial exhibition and as such it could be expected to display the very latest in exibition standards. Visitors were  given headsets at the entrance and put into groups taken in through a series of films telling the story of the young Pharao and the excavations of his tomb in the 1920’s. Facts were given in a semi-dramatized way with readings from what must have been Howard Carter’s diaries performed in the local South Scanian dialect. When the actual ”tomb” was entered, the visitors were left on their own devices and it was possible to stroll around the objects in silence with headsets on. It was a completely non communicative experience and the thought of free discovery of the displayed treasures and their meanings was just not there. The fact is that not even the treasures were there – what was shown were replicas and copies of the strange and fascinating objects and documents so remarkably found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.  There was even a replica of a corpse; a ”real” mummy – most definitively not that of the young king.

In this exhibition, the prime concern was not the artifacts and documents. Instead it was the story (badly told) of what they signified.  The storyline was suppose to catch the mind of the visitor. But what is the story of Tutankhamun in an exhibition setting without the arifacts? Leaving the event (yes, event), driving home in the misty autumn rain, we were all bit estranged. It was later on that I realized how much this exhibition said. Not about Tutankhamun or ancient Egypt, but of this time today that we call our own. Why bother showing unique archeological findings when it is possible to make and display replicas and tell a story?

Another analysis, perhaps somewhat deeper, of contemporary life also comes to mind. Canadian scholar Marcus Boon has, in his brilliant book In praise of copying, gone through the use and significance of copies and replicas in society. The need for originality is lost and in a way, he argues, this does ot necessarily need to be a bad thing. His theoretical argument does however not come from any of the expected post-modern schools of thought, but instead from buddhism. Is there such a thing as an ”original” in the first place? Is there any such thing as "essence"? If not, what is there to see and to relate to? It is an interesting and deeply anti-materialistic way of thinking.

The problem is also addressed - from the very opposite point of view - by Italian scholar Maurizio Ferraris. He formulates the concept of Documentality as an inscribed social act. In this way original artifacts and documents can be said to form an ontological necessity for the preservation of past social actions and events. Without documentality, narratives are empty. Without the original objects, the connection to the social events and objects constituting not only the tomb of Tutankhamun, but its time is… lost.

The tension between the in-house collections of original artifacts and documents in classical museums and the display of copies and replicas of temporary exhibitions is not only interesting. It is important. It tells us much about how we perceive history and meaning. In both cases the value of documentation is at centre; in the museum authentic artifacts represents reality. The documents carry meaning. In the temporary exhibition a story is told. The documentality of the items displayed is illusory – they do not carry any inherent value outside of the story told in the headphones handed out to visitors. It’s basically a tension between the value of documents in modernity and post-modernity.  We may of course prefer one over the other.

One question, however, keeps nagging me: if the mummy in Malmö was real, but not Tutankhamun – then, who was it? Does it matter in terms of documentality? Does it matter at all?

 Books mentioned:

Boon, Marcus (2010) In praise of copying. Harvard University Press.

Ferraris, Maurizio (2012) Documentality: why it is necessary to leave traces. Oxford University Press.

 Picture shows Howard Carter examining the Sarcophagus of Tutankhamun n 1922.

 

Democracy lost? Public libraries in the era of "economic growth" ideology

Public libraries have during their entire existence been associated with democratic development. They have been key institutions in the opportunities for citizens to make informed choices and be active parts of the democratic process, based on a notion of the value of individual, non-instrumental learning – Bildung. Today this has changed.

In Europe, the notion of democracy is more dimmed than ever, as easily seen in the economic development in countries like Greece and Spain. Decision makers in the EU deliberately go against the will and well-being of ordinary people (formerly the basis of democracy) only to fulfill the wants of financial markets – economic growth is to be secured, no matter the cost. This is of course a dangerous and destructive path to go; the democratic vitality of European countries have had to make way for economic administration, dressed up in democratic language.  A fiscal discourse is dominating the discussion and countries (and thus people) can be “helped” or punished at random.

In a society ruled by economism, "the market" defines the content of social and individual integration. Citizens are being reduced to consumers, and their democratic rights are replaced with their rights as consumers. This is a very different way of looking at people than the progressive democratic movements of the 20^th century that created so much economic – and social – wealth were inspired by.     

In this destructive environment libraries should have a chance to make a difference – but can they, or even more important, do they want to? We seldom see libraries explicitly talk about democracy, or democratic development, or individual learning, or Bildung anymore. What we instead see is a discourse that talks about access to not only “information” in a general, abstract sense, but to specific technical and commercial platforms and products as well. The bluntest example of this is the struggle among public libraries across Europe to get access to e-books.  The access to e-books is today the one single most important question for libraries, not least here in Sweden. In a European context where a whole new way of thinking democracy is badly needed, this is, to say the least, embarrassing.

EBLIDA, the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations has initiated a EU-spanning campaign in order to “solve” the e-book issue with the publishers. The campaign takes its departure in a “position paper” (or “manifest”, as these things used to be called i a less administrative age). It is a statement which is clear enough: the word democracy is not mentioned. Access to information, as libraries provide, is defined as essential for a “competitive market”. Is this what libraries in Europe today has been reduced to, providers of information to a competitive market, sustainers of the ideology of economic growth?

Democratic development does not just need access to this or that “information”, it does require critical discussion, consideration of alternatives, political conflict. Without this democracy is dead. Public libraries has been very good in making all this happen – but how can they now, when they focus on issues which are important to please, first and foremost, those taking so many people down in the name of economic stability and growth?

Public libraries used to be able to sort out the bad guys from the good ones. They used to be strong in integrity towards politicians. Today the battle is with commercial actors - politics are not on the agenda at all. Really, you don’t have to be nostalgic to grieve this devaluation of libraries, neither in terms of their political relevance nor their social integrity.

The future is dark. A true change would require a completely different economic and democratic system, based on the good of man instead of economic growth – but, who dares speak seriously of this today? Certainly not librarians or their organizations.

Picture taken from CNN web site (may 25, 2012); Elderly woman praying outside the Bank of Greece in Athens, february 2012. We might assume she is not praying for more e-books.

When documentation was a threat to libraries – a 20th century tale

Studying the history of the European documentation movement in the early 20^th century, one is mostly confronted with just a few names - Otlet, LaFontaine, Briet – whose contributions are mostly seen as individual achievements rather than parts of a general movements of their times. When Otlet and La Fontaine constructed the Universal Decimal Classification and the International Institute of Bibliography in Brussels around the turn of the century, they also defined aspects of a discussion which would engage many and increase in importance in the 1920’s and 30’s.

After these pioneers we find a second generation documentalists, whose work in many cases is more anonymous, but never the less built directly upon the limits and opportunities created by those before them. Among those who took the documentation movement into a more confrontational relation to librarianship was Frits Donker Duyvis of Netherlands Institute for Documentation and Filing (NIDER), and Federation International de Documentation (FID).  His dedicated work covered several areas in documentation and standardization, not seldom related to industrial development. He was also the one who initiated the development of the UDC into what came to be the perhaps finest bibliographical classification system to date.

When the documentation movement became more institutionalized, both with FID, and through the rapid increase of technical and industrial libraries and documentation centers, the library sector felt the need to in some way discuss and position itself to this “sign of the times”. Donker Duyvis was at the centre of events and, like many of his peers, he was deeply engaged in international work within his field. The first time that the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) seriously discussed the issue of documentation was at the annual meeting in Warsaw, June 1936.  The discussion came as a response to an invitation from the International Institute for Documentation, which in its conference in Copenhagen the year before had approached IFLA with the notion that primarily bibliographical issues needed to be dealt with in a new manner.

The reply from IFLA was skeptical. Marcel Godet, head of the Swiss National Library and chair of the Warsaw conference saw documentation in the light of the rapidly changing documentary environment, especially in technical economical and social fields, away from books towards more contingent document forms such as periodicals, bulletins reports and various loose sheets. The bibliographical adaptation needed had de facto already taken place in silence within many academic libraries, but on the international scene there was a need to keep distance between the technology-driven documentalists, and the tradition-laden libraries. Documentation was discussed merely as a sign of the times. Godet however was well known as a broad-minded man, and meant that this did not necessarily have to be a bad thing.

However, the division between librarianship and the documentation movement was to be maintained. In his work and writings Donker Duyvis and other documentalists more or less let librarianship go to focus more on how to handle technical and commercial information, creating standards for both types of documents and their bibliographical representation. Simultaneously in, primarily, national libraries, the need for new technology for bibliographic treatment increased. In Sweden the discussion reached a peak in the mid 1970’s with the first implementation of what would become today’s national union catalogue, LIBRIS.  By this time technology had reached such a level that the issue of documentation versus librarianship was not just a technical or practical issue, but one of identity. Documentation could no longer be discarded as just a sign of the times, but an approach to a cluster of professional identities that were slowly, but steadily merging – librarians and documentalists.

Today we can see this conflict as a tale from the 20^th century. The turn of the century symbolically buried the hatches as the rapidly maturing Internet simply erased the differences. To understand the mechanism in the developed relation between librarians and documentalists is still important, however, to be able to make sense of today’s world of dynamic documentation and librarianship.

Some references:

A collection of bibliographical essays on Donker Duyvis and his work is found in

F. Donker Duyvis: his life and work (1964) The Hague:  Netherlands Institute for Documentation and Filing

Donker Duyvis, Frits (1959) "Die Enstehung des Wortes Dokumentation im Namen des FID". Revue de la Documentation, Vol. 26 (1), 15-16.

A thorough account of the Swedish discussion is found in:

Olsson, Lena (1995) Det datoriserade biblioteket: maskindrömmar på 70-talet. Linköping: Linköpings universitet.